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Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Today, standing at the grill (I work mornings as a breakfast
cook, so about 5 a.m.) I had a flash. A memory of someone I love. I say love
because even though he is deceased, he isn’t really dead, not really. Sometimes
I talk with Fred.

In my head, not out loud. Though sometimes I’ve done that
while out bicycling. I’ll look around and say, Fred you’d love this. But mostly
I flash and think about him.

I wonder: are flashes a bit like prayers? My heart reaching
out to the universe. Are you there?

I miss Fred. I miss talking with Fred. I used to have an
office on 8th floor, down the hall from him. So after working on my
writing I’d stop by for a chat, and our conversations covered a multitude of
topics, mostly the arts. One blog post I shared years ago had to do with a
movie. I tried to tell it to him and he interrupted me, WAIT! I saw that one
too!. And, together we finished telling each other the story and which parts we
liked the best, and how we related to the main character—a woman in a bad
relationship who began to find herself by taking photographs.

So I don’t know what first sparked the memory at the grill
this a.m.—was it the movie or the missing of Fred? So many things we talked
about that I cannot untangle the emotions; they are all wrapped up together.

This is grief. When everything reminds you of that person.
The one you love. Not loved, past tense, but love. Still.

PHOTO by: Otto Jensen

Fred Burkhart died August 30, 2014. Two years ago. And, I still miss him.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

So in about 2 days I leave with my boxed bicycle on an
international flight to England, once there I will cycle the length of the
island, from top o’Scotland (John of Groates) to Land’s End. JOGLE.

Now for the scary part.

The last couple weeks leading up to this have been hectic
and stressful. I’m not writing for sympathy (I’m probably also suffering from survivor
guilt) or to say my circumstances are worse than others. I’m just saying that I
really, really need this ride.

In January I sat down with myself and did a quick
evaluation. What made me happy? Truly happy. Where was my sweet spot? And I
wrote down: bicycling. For so many people when they hear what I’m about to
embark upon, they laugh and say, that’s not a vacation.

The past 12 months have been rough: viz a viz relationships and
writing (at the same time my critique group that I relied upon for feedback
fell apart). I’ve needed to find the things that bring me back to a center, to
a bit of hope.

It’s not the news—Syrian barrel bombs and gas attacks upon
civilian populations, refugees, whole families drowning at sea, ISIS beheading
hostages, Donald Trump, etc. Any number of these things got my adrenaline going
in a very negative way. The helplessness I feel compounded with guilt, that I
should be doing something.

Then the past couple of weeks. A woman crossing the street
in front of Uptown Baptist Church, age 57, is shot and killed. Then Friday
night a man walking in front of my building, age 55, gunned down. I am so angry
at politicians, the system, the inability of justice, all the people who stand
in the way of reasonable gun control. Until that time these senseless murders
will keep happening. Then also last week a good friend’s husband SUDDENLY died.
She heard a thump in the bathroom and that was it.

All this loss, pain, suffering built and built until
Saturday I felt paralyzed. I literally had broken out into hives. People say to
me, I couldn’t do what you do, meaning (I suppose) live in Chicago as a
religious worker and try to make a difference, try to be peace to our
neighbors. And, they’re right. This weekend I had to reevaluate—is this
something I can continue doing? Is there still good I can do?

All I really know is this: in two days I will fly to England
to ride my bike. I will be thinking of the many souls these past few weeks who
have lost their life. I will say to myself: This is my now.

Monday, August 29, 2016

Anyway here is an update. In May when I was cheated, not
given the advertised discount at the register, the manager half-heartedly told
me I could come back when stuff was 70% off and ask for a free pair of socks.

Okay, like this will never happen.

Yesterday I rode past Sports Authority on my bike and saw
that, indeed, stuff was down to 80% off. I went in and it was chaos, empty
shelves and super long lines, but I found a pair of socks and waited in line
and at the register I told the guy my story. I swear he didn’t blink twice.
Take ‘em!

I had the feeling I could have left with a pair of dumbbells.
No one cares. So my faith in humanity is now restored. Now onto news of doping
in the world of athletics and the Olympics.

Friday, August 26, 2016

How many of us have had that feeling, that tickle inside
your stomach, that your brakes have failed?

Let’s just say as a kid growing up, a lot. I was constantly
getting into trouble. Not shoplifting, skipping school, smoking behind the
garden shed kind of trouble. More like smoking outside the fireworks factory.

I still remember snaking out late at night to go on a
motorcycle ride with my friend. He zipped me into a jumpsuit—in case we
crashed, he said, I wouldn’t lose the top layer of skin. Good thing, because we
came to a sign at the bottom of a steep hill that as we flashed by it—my brain
translated the letters: Bridge Out.

Go ahead—tell us about the crazy, the craziest of crazy.
Flash about the inkling you got before all hell broke loose, before the wheels
came off. (The worst part is when your mother/mother/conscience asks: Why? There is no answer.)

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Readers of this blog also know that I
love (my boy) James Schuyler. He was a master of the Write Right Now. Thus, his
National Book Award winner, The Morning
of the Poem which is one continuous dream of a morning, of a poem, of life
observed. The Award was well-deserved. His work continues to influence writers
of today.

Today.

The world seems scary. There isn’t a
lot of solace. So I turn to poetry. Now is the time to immerse ourselves in
poetry. To turn away from the world and all it’s turmoil and trauma. I’m not
exactly going to put my head in a hole, but rather I want to describe to you
another world. One without a ranting and raving orange-haired man. Thank you.

The sky eats up the trees

The newspaper comes. It
has a bellyful of bad news.
The sun is not where it was.
Nor is the moon. Once so
flat, now so round. A man

carries papers out of the house. Which makes a small

change. I read at night.

I take the train and go

to the city. Then I come

back. Mastic Shirley,

Patchogue, Quogue. And for

all the times I’ve stopped, hundreds, at their

stations, that’s all

I know. One has

a lumberyard. The sun

puts on a smile.

The day had a bulge

around 3 p.m. After,

it slips, cold and quiet

into night. I read

in bed. And in the a.m.

put a recond on to

shave to. Uptown in a

shop a man has blue

eyes that enchant. He

is friendly and inter

esting to me, though he is

not an interesting man.

Bad news is a funny kind

of breakfast. An addict

I can scarcely eat my

daily crumble without

its bulk. I read at

night and shave when

I get up. That’s true.

Life will change and

I am part of it and

will change too. So

will you, and you, and

you, the secret—what’s

a secret?—center of

my life, your name and

voice engraved like

record grooves upon

my life, spinning its

time between the lines

I read at night, a

graffito on the walls

of flavored paper I

see, looking up from

pages of Lady Mary

Wortley Montague or

a yellow back novel.

A quiet praise, yes,

that’s it, between the

lines I read at night.

From Collected Poems, James
Schuyler, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.

Monday, August 22, 2016

In 2014 I went on a solo trip to Sweden. It didn’t seem like
such a big deal to go by myself—more like an adventure. Until the airlines lost
my luggage, until I couldn’t explain to the bus driver where I wanted to go,
until my credit card stopped working. I could go on and on.

Right now I am stressing about my upcoming trip to England,
September 1 – 26, where I plan to ride my bike from the top o’Scotland to the
bottom of Cornwall, Land’s End. A journey of over 1,000 miles. I can think of
an endless stream of things that might go wrong. And, likely will. But as I
think back over Sweden and that trip two years ago, I had a fabulous time.

The weather was perfect.

I managed to meet up with 2 of my friends and have a great
time re-connecting.

I ate wonderful food, and fell in love with Konditori cozy cafés that sell
great pastries and coffee.

For
the most part people spoke English—why don’t I speak 2 or 3 languages!?

And all those problems: the
luggage got delivered the next day to my couchsurfing host, I made it to Sjötorp even though I could never manage to
pronounce the name of the town, walked to a B & B and hired a bike to ride
along the Gota Canal, and somehow my credit card started working—though never
on the buses because I didn’t have the chip. (seeThe Traveler, post)

Always, always there was a way. This is not simply
optimistic thinking. In tight places or times of travel confusion and mayhem, I
felt the universe, God, the spirit of Marco Polo guiding me, telling me to walk
through doors, trust, take another step.

Thank goodness for friends (you know who you are) for
talking me down off the ledge yesterday when I started to panic. I just need to
remind myself—to fall into the ever-loving hands of life, and live. Take the
problems as they come, knowing there is a way.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Epitaph a short text honoring a deceased person. Technically
it is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque. The essence of writing small. The
original 6-word memoir, the ultimate flash. This is an easy task, a flash you can write in your
bathing suit sitting on a towel at the beach. Take a second or two to scribble
down what you think you might be known for, what you want to leave behind, the last word.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Actually he was about many things: art, dance, classical
music, travel, gay theater, movies. He was about the exclamation point. It is
the singular fingerprint of his work.

How many of us grew up, in school being told the exclamation
point was to be used rarely, in instances of the extreme. Indeed, I once
sneaked a peek (okay, I was spying)at a roommate’s diary, a girl I didn’t like
and liked even less when I saw the page covered in exclamation points. She was
as shallow as I suspected, is what I told myself. The (exclamation) point is
she probably was, exclamation points aside. So I planned to be careful,
judicious, barely rising above a whisper. Early Jane Hertenstein work does not
display an ounce of exuberance.

Then I discovered Frank O’Hara, and the fun began.

I could be playful, fey, charming, bantering about. Just
like Frank.

All along he brought me inside his circle of friends. For
once I felt as if I belonged. I was allowed to feel, to let my voice crack in
enthusiasm, talk a little loud, eat noisily, sit with my legs spread. Life on
the edge of exclamation.

Take a look at his poem, “Today,” included, along with the other poems in
this essay, in the 2008 collection Selected
Poems:
Oh! Kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
Harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! All
The stuff they’ve always talked about

He’s so sincere, that as much as I admire him (and I really
admire him!), I’d feel embarrassed to have written some of his poems. Not
because it’s shameful, but because it’s just too, too much. But he means
it.

O’Hara’s poems are an antidote to this feeling of shame over the tastes we
find natural and immovable. James Schuyler, perhaps the most
sublime poet of the small thing made infinite, in one of his many catty,
bright, loving letters to his dear friend O’Hara put it best:Your passion always makes me feel like a cloud the wind detaches (at last)
from a mountain so I can finally go sailing over all those valleys with their
crazy farms and towns. I always start bouncing up and down in my chair when I
read a poem of yours like “Radio,” where you seem to say, “I know you won’t think
this is much of a subject for a poem but I just can’t help it: I feel like
this,” so that in the end you seem to be the only one who knows what the
subject of a poem is.

But there’s joy in loving what you love, a purity in
expressing it exactly in its unchecked, effusive and messy truth, and O’Hara
felt no shame in putting that feeling out there with an exclamation!

At O'Hara's
funeral, Larry Rivers said, 'Frank O'Hara was my best friend. There are at
least sixty people in New York who thought Frank O'Hara was their best friend.'
That sentiment was echoed repeatedly by those who knew him. Everyone he
befriended felt the greatest intimacy with him, even as they recognized that
his intimacy was exclusive only for the time that they were with him. As John
Gruen wrote, 'When Frank talked to you he made you feel everything you did was
of vital importance and interest - at least for the moment.'

The
exclamation point never detracted from his seriousness, that he was seriously
briliiant, an intellectual, could think and talk most people under the table. That
sense of riding the wave of the present can be felt in much of O'Hara's best
poetry; the urgency of his need to be right there, right now.

It has been 50 years since his untimely death on Fire Island
(July 25, 1966) when he was hit by a dune buggy before succumbing to grievous
internal injuries the next day.

Is a fun little read that puts you there—because who can
actually afford the Hamptons in the summer?! Maybe it once was in the 1950s
when artists and writers were moving there.

Larry Rivers: he first thing I did in Southampton, Fairfield
accompanying me, was rent from a Mr. Ralph Conklin a two-story eight-room house
for $85 a month at 111 Toylsome Lane, down at the end of a long, muddy
driveway. Alongside the house, fortunately, was a weathered no-doors,
no-windows shed with enough space to carry on my life as an artist. There were
trees all around and above the house, and one small lawn boxed in by tall,
thick privet. The house had dark umber shingles except where green moss grew on
them. . . I began referring to the house as ''my place in the country;'' more
apt would have been ''my slum in the trees.'' . . . He paid rent with a bad
check.

A considerable amount of time is spent in this volume about
Green River Cemetery, a place I would love to visit—and could possibly afford.
I’ve always had the feeling that the further out you go on Long Island the less
wealthy the residents. This is probably a matter of percentage points amongst
the top 1%, but hey!

Buried at Green River are some of my all-time favorites:
Frank O’Hara, Elaine de Kooning, and, of course, famously, Jackson Pollock. Joe
LeSueur is also there, not next to Frank. Larry Rivers lies not too far away in
Sag Harbor at the Independent
Jewish Cemetery. I’m not sure where Janie Freilicher is interred;
she lived in Water Mill, long Island, not far from Pollack’s place or where the
Fairfield Porters resided in East Hampton. Jimmie is still there. James
Schuyler was the on-and-off eternal guest of the Porters and his ashes are at the
Little Portion Friary (Episcopal), Mt. Sinai, Long Island, New York. Someday I
will make a pilgrimage to see him. "June 30, 1974," is a poem that takes
us back to a morning at Water Mill in the Hamptons, as lazy as any summer day.

The Sun Breaks Through, 1991

while Jane and Joe (Hazan, her husband)
sleep in their room
and John (Ashbery) in his. I
think I’ll make more toast.

View of the interior of Jane Freilicher's art studio, Water Mill, Long Island,

Schuyler describes a tranquil morning, nothing urgent.

. . . a millionaire’s
white chateau turns
its flank to catch
the risen sun. No
other houses, except
this charming one,
alive with paintings,
plants and quiet.

I can almost feel it, the summer solitude. No plans, just
friends.

Jane Freilicher, self-portrait at Water Mill studio

From the viewpoint of deKooning’s bicycle we circle the east
end of the island, drop in and visit some of the troubled souls that once lived
and created there. Now there houses are museums. Hushed monuments to many
summers, to drinking, and flirting, and playing. Painting and poetics. Thank
you Mr. Long for taking us there.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Watching the
Olympics last night with a roomful of people (one stops by, then another, then
another until we are all talking over the announcers), got me wondering: How
has the sport of women’s gymnastics at the Olympics changed through the years?

Take a look at this
video compiled from the 1936 Olympics. It looks like they’re going in slow
motion. They are seen walking on the beam, another move is sitting on it,
TOUCHING it with their hands. Virtually everything in the video would be a
MAJOR deduction today. The uneven bars—it’s painful to watch, the athlete sort
of lowers herself from the top to the lower, then STOPS. None of those two and
half double-twist layouts. Truthfully the routines remind me of those videos of
seniors doing exercises in their wheelchairs, moves merely to keep their
arthritics hands and torso flexible.

Fast forward to
2016 Rio. Can you imagine the gymnast of 1936 watching Simone Biles?

One: the outfits.
The athlete of 1936 is wearing a baggy one-piece, something along the lines of
what I was forced to wear in gym class in high school. The announcer last night
said the leotard used by the USA team costs $1200 each. Not sure why? Maybe for
all the glitter?? Also the gymnast, though fit, doesn’t strike you as athletic.
More like a girl you might pick up at a Wisconsin bar and share a plate of hot
wings with.

More than glitter,
the USA team shines. They were brilliant. They made the Chinese girls look like
1936. Not quite, but you get the comparison. Instead of tenths of a point, fractions,
they surpassed them by actually 8 whole points.

The floor exercise
was a performance in physical strength and grace. Enter the samba, exit Rachmaninoff and those
tired routines where the girl twirls and flirts with the crowd. You could
literally hear the floor mat bouncing when they hit it to execute no-hands back
and forward flips, flying to the rafters.

Monday, August 8, 2016

At this blog I frequently quote from the New York School of
Poets (which wasn’t a school at all—see Freeze Frame: How to Write Flash Fiction). Frank O’Hara was born in
1926 and died July 25, 1966, on Fire Island (NY) from a
freakish dune buggy accident. He was a true Millennial.

Just fifty years before the
technology.

If O’Hara were alive today he’d be
tweeting and Instagramming, and Tumblr-ing and posting all over Facebook. He’d
be one for the Snapchat.

Frank O’Hara was a conduit for his
friends. He was constantly reaching out to people. It sounds shallow to say he
was the life of the party, and truthfully I’ve never read that in print, but he
brought people together. He also had his snappish, snippy side where he could cut
friends off. He collected people. Bu sending them letters, poems, telegrams. I
could easily see him writing for Tin
House or Barrelhouse, or a gossip
column for AWP. He had a sense of humor and a sardonic wit. A hedonist, maybe.
Running headlong into the waves. Schuyler described O’Hara as having a “black
ear” from talking on the phone so much. Today Frank would have totally had a
cellphone in his hand, keeping up with all his contacts, typing in witty texts,
and captions to pics.

Then as now, we’d all be amazed at how
much writing he’d be able to accomplish.

Frank O’Hara, by Alex Katz oil on wood cutout

Joe’s Jacket

Entraining to
Southampton in the parlor car with Jap and Vincent, I

see life as a
penetrable landscape lit from above

like it was in my
Barbizonian kiddy days when automobiles

were owned by the same
people for years and the Alfa Romeo was

only a rumor under the
leaves beside the viaduct and I

pretending to be adult
felt the blue within me and light up there

no central figure me, I
was some sort of cloud or a gust of wind

at the station a crowd
of drunken fishermen on a picnic Kenneth

is hard to find but we
find, through all the singing, Kenneth smiling

it is off to Janice’s
bluefish and the incessant talk of affection

expressed as
excitability and spleen to be recent and strong

and not unbearably
right in attitude, full of confidences

now I will say it,
thank god, I knew you would

an enormous party
mesmerizing comers in the disgathering light

and dancing
miniature-endless, like a pivot

I drink to smother my
sensitivity for a while so I won’t stare away

I drink to kill the fear
of boredom, the mounting panic of it

I drink to reduce my
seriousness so a certain spurious charm

can appear
and win its flickering little victory over noise

I drink to
die a little and increase the contrast of this questionable moment

and then I
am going home, purged of everything except anxiety and self-distrust

now I will
say it, thank god, I knew you would

and the rain
has commenced its delicate lament over the orchards

an enormous
window morning and the wind, the beautiful desperation of a tree

fighting off
strangulation, and my bed has an ugly calm

I reach to
the D. H. Lawrence on the floor and read “The Ship of Death”

I lie back
again and begin slowly to drift and then to sink

a somnolent
envy of inertia makes me rise naked and go to the window

where the
car horn mysteriously starts to honk, no one is there

and Kenneth
comes out and stops it in the soft green lightless stare

and we are
soon in the Paris of Kenneth’s libretto, I did not drift

away I did
not die I am there with Haussmann and the rue de Rivoli

and the
spirits of beauty, art and progress, pertinent and mobile

in their
worldly way, and musical and strange the sun comes out

returning by
car the forceful histories of myself and Vincent loom

like the
city hour after hour closer and closer to the future I am here

and the
night is heavy through not warm, Joe is still up and we talk

only of the
immediate present and its indiscriminately hitched-to past

the feeling
of life and incident pouring over the sleeping city

which seems
to be bathed in an unobtrusive light which lends things

coherence
and an absolute, for just that time as four o’clock goes by

and soon I
am rising for the less than average day, I have coffee

I prepare
calmly to face almost everything that will come up I am calm

but not as
my bed was calm as it softly declined to become a ship

I borrow
Joe’s seersucker jacket though he is still asleep I start out

when I last
borrowed it I was leaving there is was on my Spanish plaza back

and hid my
shoulders from San Marco’s pigeons was jostled on the Kurfurstendamm

and sat
opposite Ashes in an enormous leather chair in the Continental

it is all
enormity and life it has protected me and kept me here on

many
occasions as a symbol does with the heart is full and risks no speech

a precaution
I loathe as the pheasant loathes the season and is preserved

it will not
be need, it will be just what it is and just what happens.

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Quick Bio

Jane Hertenstein is the author of Home is Where We Live: Life at a Shelter Through a Young Girl’s Eyes (picture book), Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag Lady (with Marie James), and Beyond Paradise (YA fiction). See BOOKS
She has taught mini courses in memoir at the university level as well as seminars at Cornerstone Festival, Prairie School of Writing. Jane is listed on the Illinois Artists Roster. Roster Artists are certified by the Illinois Arts Council to work in public schools introducing young people to the arts. She lives in Chicago where she facilitates a “happening” critique group.